Fire and Smoke
by hIDinG tHIeF
Summary: [Jou x Shizuka, some Jou x Mai] For Jou, the smell of wood smoke means guilt and love and Christmas in a broken home, and all the other things that he’ll never tell Mai about.


**Disclaimer: **Yu-gi-oh belongs of a bunch of guys who are _not _me - and you are _so _lucky.

**Warnings/Notes: **Rated for HIGHLY disturbing content. One of the top three most disturbing things I've ever written, hands down; it disturbs even me -.-; I _wish_ I could say I was drunk when I wrote this, but unfortunately the people whose opinions matter already know that I hate alcohol... heh... I guess the true depths of my perversion are revealed at last... Or _are _they? O.O Also, a small aside - I'm making it to where Jou and Shizuka were about ten when their folks split up. It probably says somewhere in the show exactly how old they were, and I'm probably wrong, and I'm probably going to get angry complaints about it, but I'm too lazy to look it up and it can't be _that_ much of a stretch, right...? (Though why I did this became more and more mysterious to me as I went along, because ten-year-olds are surprisingly hard to write - is it a pre-teen? still just a kid? a space alien, perhaps? -.-;)

* * *

Jonouchi Katsuya loves the smell of wood smoke, because it reminds him of family.

He hates the smell for much the same reason.

It's one in the morning on a Friday night - New Year's Eve, or New Years now, to be precise - and he's curled up on a luxurious, cushy leather couch in front of a roaring fire with his arms wrapped around his - equally luxurious and cushy, in his opinion - girlfriend. Even though it's six or seven days too late, she's humming Christmas carols, which is a sign of just how very happy and drunk she is right now, because normally Mai isn't the type to hum _anything_, _ever_. They've been lying like that for about half an hour, after having finally escaped the annual New Year's party at Kami Game Shop, in all its drunken glory. The stark contrast of the somber silence in the mansion that Mai's parents owned but rarely visited might've been depressing, if only Jou weren't a bit sloshed himself.

Late on a winter's night, a beautiful girl in his arms, a warm fire - the only spark of life in the heart of zombie house - perfuming the air with that heavenly, heavy smell that would've been stifling had it not been so soothing... where had he seen this picture before...?

"The fire is beautiful, isn't it?" Mai murmurs sleepily.

"_Isn't it?"_

Jou stares into the flickering core of the flames, and as it seduces him, he remembers...

* * *

_Jou loved the smell of wood smoke, because it reminded him of family. It reminded him of Christmas._

_On that particular Christmas morning something like six years ago, he lay in bed for a long time with his eyes closed even after he'd awoken in an uncharacteristic show of restraint. Perhaps, even though he was too young to fully understand, he had sensed the way the atmosphere in the house had been changing lately. He lay very still and let the scents of a fire and breakfast and cold with a faint overtone of fresh pine wash over him, willed it to sink into every pore, and perhaps he sensed how fleeting it all was, how he could no more hold on to it than he could hold on to smoke..._

_But then he heard a rustling beside his head, and his eyes flew open and he grinned. Shizuka was sitting up in the bed next to his, stretching one arm high above her head and using her free hand to stifle a giant yawn, and he found himself feeling rather possessive. "Merry Christmas, imouto," he said softly. She glanced at him in startlement, and then returned his grin, with interest._

"_Merry Christmas, 'nii-san," she returned as she slipped to the floor, toes wriggling in protest at the cold hardwood. She grasped his hand, and he resisted purely for sport; she giggled: "Come on - it's Christmas! - don't you want to open presents?"_

_They dressed in a flurry and tumbled down the stairs, giggling their excitement. Breakfast was already on the table, and their mother beamed at them as they slipped into their seats; their father glanced away from his book long enough to pat his son on the head as he took the seat next to him. The siblings shoveled their food down as fast as they could, practically vibrating with the promise of presents, and the adults' conversation drifted meaninglessly around their heads:_

"_Dear - it's Christmas. Do you have to read at the table?"_

"_Hn. Why not?"_

"_Well, what if we wanted to have a conversation for once? Like a family?"_

_A pause, but then he sighed, and the book was put down. It **was **Christmas, after all. Then there was silence._

_Then it was out to the living room, where stocking were dumped out in front of the merrily dancing flames and wrapping paper flew everywhere. Shizuka received dresses and dolls and books and candy; Jou received games and toys and books and candy. Once again, the distant wind-whisper of their parents' voices murmured in the distance._

"_Did you get him that car?"_

_A chuckle, which could have meant nothing but said in her mind 'Ha, well, if you didn't, then who else - Santa Claus?' "Yeah... I could barely pull him away from it in the store last month..."_

"_It was fifty dollars!"_

_A heated pause, then. "Well, that necklace was ninety, but I didn't hear you bit-"_

"_Not in front of the children!"_

"_Don't tell me-"_

_Softly the words faded into the next room and were presently muffled behind a closed door as the children played amid bright colors._

* * *

_The argument was loud and wild, full of crying and screaming and breaking. The siblings huddled together under the covers on Jou's bed, Shizuka clutching her new doll and Jou clutching Shizuka._

_When the fighting had led their father storming past their door, she had cried and wanted to hide in the closet, but Jou hadn't wanted her to; he'd wanted her to feel safer than that, in his arms, even though he was trembling as well._

_It was quiet now, finally. They had heard the front door slam a while back; it had been their father, who would spend the rest of the night going from bar to bar. Their mother had fallen into bed soon after he'd left, but the siblings didn't know this for certain, so they hid for a bit longer in the silence before their growling stomachs finally forced them out._

_They crept down the dark hall as quietly as ghosts, hand in tightly clutching hand, and bypassed their mother's bedroom in favor of the living room. Amid the trampled remnants of colorful paper, reminders of the fight remained; sparkling glass, a smashed toy car... Jou fell upon his Christmas candy with a vengeance while Shizuka nibbled at hers at a more sedate pace, because all the sugar in her empty stomach made her feel a little ill. No one had bothered to put the fire out, and though it was barely more than embers now, they moved closer for what little warmth it could provide._

"'_Nii-san?" Shizuka said in a contemplative fashion, sucking on a chocolate. "Are mom and dad going to get a - divorce?"_

"_A divorce?" Jou asked, startled; she nodded._

"_Kiyoko-chan's mom and dad are divorced, and she hasn't seen her dad since she was four-"_

"_Maybe it'd be **better **if we didn't have to see him anymore," he remarked, tearing savagely at a particularly tough caramel. He was so preoccupied with his sweet that it took him several moments to notice the tears leaking out of the corners of his sister's eyes, but then he dropped it on the carpet in his earnestness. "Oh - but you know he won't leave, not really-"_

"_He might!" Shizuka said bitterly. "Kiyoko-chan's dad left without even saying good-bye to her, Ayame-chan told me! And he took her big brother with him, and she hasn't seen him again either-"_

_He silenced her then by snatching her up in a tight hug, breathing in the scent of her messy copper hair. "No!" he said fiercely. "That's not going to happen to us! Never!" He held her out at arm's length by her shoulders and scrutinized her solemn eyes with his own. "If - if they try to split us up like that - we're gonna run away together!"_

"_Oh," she said faintly, and then she suddenly lunged forward again to bury her face in his chest, crying in earnest now; he flailed helplessly under the unexpected onslaught. "You promise?" she choked out._

"_I promise."_

_She gulped for breath, and then whispered, "I love you!"_

_He blushed, and finally settled on wrapping his arms lightly around her and stroking her back in what he hoped was a soothing manner. "Love you too," he mumbled._

_She sniffled, and rubbed roughly at her eyes. "I - I really do. Everyone says that Akira-kun is the cutest boy in my class, but I love you even more than him." She went a bit red too, but not half as badly as him._

"_W-Well, I love you more than Tamayo-chan, too," he confessed. She giggled at that, and pulled away to better scrub at her face._

"_Tamayo-chan? Why her?"_

_He poked at the discarded caramel, which seemed to have melted slightly into the fibers of the carpet because of the fire. "W-Well... she - asked me to be her boyfriend," he said in a rush, and glowered when she sniggered even more. "She did! But I told her... that I couldn't take care of two girls... I... don't want to take care of anyone else..."_

_He continued to stare at his caramel at first, ears burning, but when no response was forthcoming, he snuck a glance at her. She was gaping slightly at him, flushed enough that it could just be made out even in the red-orange firelight... Half on instinct, he moved closer, and when she didn't flinch away, he hesitantly touched his lips to hers._

_She jerked back after just a second or two, eyes wide, and he couldn't meet them at all now as his embarrassment turned to shame. "I - I know that brothers and sisters aren't supposed to," he muttered to a ribbon on the floor, "but that's what you're supposed to do when you love someone the most... I love you more than anyone else, so..."_

"_It's not right," she whispered, sounding stunned and strained._

"_I **know**. But nothing's right anymore, and I don't want to lose you - I want to be so close that they can't take us apart no matter what-"_

_Any other words he might have had left him in an incoherent 'wumph,' as she flung her arms around his neck for a second time. "'Nii-san," she whimpered, "'nii-san, I - love you the most too. I mean, of course I do, and I knew, but I never thought about it like-" She looked up at him anxiously. "Was it wrong all along?"_

"_No," he said firmly. "No, you were never wrong - did it... feel wrong?" he asked, rather anxious himself._

_She blushed some more, and fidgeted with his t-shirt sleeve rather than look him in the eyes. "I... don't know. It was over so fast..."_

_Then they were looking at each other again, and Jou couldn't ask the obvious question because he found that he suddenly couldn't find the words, because he felt like they were **really **looking at each other somehow, and then they were kissing again. She gasped when he reached up to touch her hair, and the kisses were all open-mouthed from then on, and it was very sloppy and inexperienced but it tasted like chocolate and caramel and when they pulled away to gasp for breath they breathed in sweet wood smoke._

"_I love you," she had time to gasp, and then he was kissing her again, and somehow she was on her back with him kneeling over her, and she forgot all about what their mom and dad would say. No one would ever be able to separate them now, she just knew it._

_As they kissed, Jou felt that same possessiveness from this morning come back to him again, only a million times stronger. No one else would ever even **touch **her, he swore silently, drunk on the dangerous new feeling growing deep inside him that was telling him that there was something else he should be doing now. The older boys, he thought muzzily, in the schoolyard... looking at a magazine, and they'd said... Feeling yet more heat rise to his face, he shifted all of his weight to one hand and laid the other tentatively on her waist, and felt her shiver under him._

"_Mmph... tickles," she mumbled, and then gasped suddenly as he moved his hand up to her small breast._

"_Does it hurt?" he worried, instantly drawing back. Shizuka's hand fluttered up to take his, however, and moved it back. She closed her eyes, and shivered._

"_No," she said, a bit breathlessly. "I don't know... I like it..."_

_Something lurched in his stomach at the sight of her looking so vulnerable underneath him, and the feeling was a little scary, so he closed his eyes and went back to kissing her, possibly a little more ardently than before. He wasn't quite sure what to do with his hand now that he had it there, but she guided it with her own, mewling occasionally, and he memorized the way her nipple hardened under his fingers._

_It wasn't until he brushed the inside of her thigh with his knee as he shifted positions and she gasped and turned her head violently to the side that he realized what he was supposed to do next. She bit her lip, and the trail of saliva on her chin left over from their kissing mesmerized him, so that it took a moment for him to comprehend what she was saying, but it wasn't very coherent anyway. "I - I feel -" she half-sobbed, and couldn't seem to get any more out. She squirmed helplessly, and though he only half-understood it himself, he found himself reaching down - he laid his hand on her stomach, and looked at her uncertainly._

"_Does it feel bad?" he asked, because he was feeling kind of uncomfortable, but not **bad**. She shook her head. "Do you want - um, is it okay-?" Her eyes were very wide, but she nodded hard._

_Though he was still hesitant, he slipped his hand carefully between her pants and panties, on the reasoning that that was the area where his discomforted seemed to be originating, and he encountered a strange, foreign smoothness. Of course he'd known that girls' bodies were different down 'there' too, but he realized that he hadn't really know the details - and Shizuka made a choking sort of noise at the lightest touch, and reached down to press his hand closer._

"_That's better?" he asked. She shuddered, bucking up forcefully against his hand, and yanked him into another kiss._

_Eventually her hand fell away, possibly because she was feeling too weak to keep it there any longer; he experimentally tried rubbing her in counter-time with her thrusts, which elicited a sharp little cry. Between kisses, she managed to gasp out, "No... one will... ever take me away... right?"_

"_You're mine," he agreed._

_Presently her movements grew more frantic, and her breathing sped up considerably to quick little gasps; she threw her head back, and Jou watched in fascination as her mouth opened in a silent cry. Then she was still, save for the trembling, and Jou gathered her up in his arms because she looked like she needed it. He rather hoped the feeling between his own legs would go away soon, because she looked exhausted right now._

_They lay together on the floor amid the candy and bright paper and forgotten toys for a long time, and stared into the fire. As they watched, the last smoldering log collapsed in on itself and sent of a shower of sparks. Shizuka giggled sleepily._

"_It's pretty, isn't it?"_

_He grinned, and clumsily tied a ribbon in her hair. "Beautiful."_

* * *

Mai shifts slightly in Jou's arms. "Katsuya? Hmm? You okay?"

He blinks the afterimages out of his eyes, and smiles down at her, and she's too drunk to notice how tense the expression is. "Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful."

He kisses her then, and before the night is over he will make love to her - but, though he would never tell anyone in a million year, he isn't really okay at all, because the room smells overwhelmingly of wood smoke, and he hates it.

**Owari**

**AN: **Aw, that was sad... (smirk) . Sick, too, of course. I think I kind of wrote them too naïve for ten-year olds, but they kind of needed to be at least that old, didn't they...? I am _so _going to get my account removed for this, but I don't care. Well, actually, I suppose I kind of would if it actually happened - haven't you ever heard of the _carpe diem_ style? (snicker) That's right, it's got a fancy Latin name, it can't be porn... okay, so it's not technically _carpe diem_ anyway, but it's almost... kinda... er, review please? Flames will be used to thaw out my poor frozen feet.


End file.
